What is the Robot.txt?

For those of you who don’t know what robot.txt is; it is a protocol which is designed to limit what areas of sites can be crawled by spiders, to understand this completely you should have a rough idea of how spiders work. Using the robot.txt optimisation carries with it major benefits when used correctly. For example forums will regularly use this feature, i.e. in general chatter sections if they do not want the member’s general discussions to confuse a search engines designation of their theme. Think of it as a no follow tag for content, be it images, banners or entire pages.

How do I use robot.txt optimisation?
Well it is  relatively simple piece of code, for example if you wanted to prevent the Googlebot from seeing graphics on your site the code you would place in the robot.txt file would be:

User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /graphics/

However most of this can be done using the Meta tags if for some reason you cannot upload a robot.txt files.

Another key use of the protocol is preventing any on site duplicate content penalties, for example if you have two pages with similar or identical content you can use the Robot.txt file to tell the spiders to ignore the content which you do not wish to be the authoritative piece. This is very helpful when you have a large site in a competitive or highly plagiarised field.

Limitations of the Robot.txt
The robot.txt file is quite limited for example a search engine may still index a file that it the robot.txt file is telling it not to crawl if another site is linking to that page. Also a more concerning issue is that the Robot.txt file only effects “well behaved” robots; it will not stop a competitor from analysing or attacking your site.

How do I create a robot.txt file?
Robot.txt files are pretty easy to make, not only are there numerous online tools to help you make them, or you can write it yourself in a text editor and upload it to the root directory.

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Well the foundation of Social Media Optimization is of course the blog, whilst many other Social Medias exist this is the key tool in most webmasters arsenal. It seems evident that nobody in their right mind would ignore blogging when undertaking any SEO campaign never mind a SMO campaign which is centred on this type of media. However recently the social network has become increasingly popular and yet harder for webmasters to spam, we all remember how easy it was to litter myspace in links, or fake a celebrity who would endorse your product, right?

So it seems most changes that have occurred have occurred to punish webmasters for blog commenting and social network spamming, so the innovation of course is how we get around that.

What’s new with the Blog?

Well we all know that blogs were made nofollow, and then in turn many webmasters pushed the dofollow pluggin to give them a traffic advantage from SEO and SMO’s across the world, and of course, this has worked, the difficulty of course is finding these dofollow sites as they receive so much spam webmasters get fed up, remove the dofollow and then the sites drop off the free lists. The smart idea is to have softwares do it for you, but they are hardly reliable, the dofollow tag has only hurt blogs, as they receive less traffic, fewer comments, and more concentrated spam.

What about the Social Networks?

Well, the spam has been cleaned up so SMO’s really have to clean their act up, but this isn’t too difficult, instead of targeting anyone and everyone, add people who may be interested in your product, the major benefit that has happened in the Social Networking SMO world is their rapid growth outside of America, this of course means that you can target people from all over the world. The ability to target this sort of traffic is invaluable, especially when you are niche marketing. Linked In is of course the favourite for SMO’s at the moment for the simple reason that it allows you to post numerous links not just one or two like other Social Networks.

When discussing Social Media we cannot forget videos right?

Well the video market has been saturated recently with everybody trying to go viral, and get backlinks across the globe. The only real innovation isn’t particularly great, it is video scraping, the logic is that if somebody has a popular video steal it and you’ll be popular too right? Well yes, and while this wouldn’t work on the normal search engines with, let’s say, content. But the bonus for SMO’s with video search engines is that essentially they aren’t quite as clever, you can rank in youtube very easily from simply picking the right keywords and maybe you might rank underneath the original video it is quite easy to rank highly and receive a vast amount of traffic.

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Social Media Optimization

Well, before explaining how social media optimization works it would be poignant to explain what social media optimization is. It is of course on of the less familiar aspects of SEM even to many of the “experts” in this field, who prefer to concentrate on search engine optimization. It is very undervalued and under competed. This, in many ways, makes social media optimization very useful to an SEM although some would say that social media optimization is not part of the job of an SEO or SEM simply because it is not particularly relevant to search engines and doesn’t really give you a big boost in the SERPS. However, if you are implementing SEO then it would be silly not to take advantage of other forms of free marketing online.

The brief definition of  SMO

So explaining exactly how social media optimization works is not too hard to explain, it is the use of social media networks such as Facebook, Myspace and Twitter to drive traffic to a website. The difficult bit is explaining how to do it properly.

Many people do trust friend of a friend recommendations and of course the bonus of this is of course it is free to implement yourself and if you wish to have the service on a large scale it is often considerably cheaper than a PPC campaign. This can be a very tantalising offer to small businesses and also the reason why large scale businesses neglect this form of advertising and miss out on its potential benefits.

The problem with SMO is of course that if done wrong your website can look spammy and the “advertising” you have implemented can actually have a negative effect. Also it can be very time consuming to build a network which actually pays attention to what you post. And this is the reason that many people make a particularly poor decision to gain lots and lots of friends using tacky software’s and send out mass spam messages hoping that by law of adverages some people will visit your site. The conversion rates from this sort of advertising are, rather unsurprisingly, low.

The potential benefits

The best benefits you can expect are through word and mouth and the only way to do this is though organic friend building. Requesting people who may potentially be interested in your product not just every random person you see as this, will in turn; only create negative word of mouth. The bonus you can get from word of mouth is self explanatory, you gain traffic, awareness and potentially sales. The other main benefit is that it works in the same way as an emailed newsletter. It keeps people informed about changes to your brand. Surely this is a good thing as it can increase returning custom. So hopefully this article has helped you understand a little bit more about how social media marketing works.

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Search engines are notorious for their inability to update quickly, the idea of the search engine spiders being able to crawl the entire web for new pages at a moments notice was simply unfathomable. The power involved in searching the entire internet and keeping the search engines as close to real time as we know them is incredibly vast and that is nothing in comparison to what updating the internet in real time would take.

But, now Microsoft’s Bing has decided to latch on to what is by far the best opportunity to do this and get one over on its competitors. And that opportunity is the social networking sites Twitter and Facebook, they’ve been providing updates about, well just about anything you could imagine for a few years now in the form of tweets and status updates and ok organising the entire web in this manner is a far more monumental task which is yet to be achieved, but what Bing is beginning is a step towards this by amalgamating its services with the social networks to add their updates to its search.

The fear of course is that the search engine will be flooded with more useless information and dribble which is about as useful as the average user as a chocolate tea pot (this is a British colloquialism if you’re American and don’t quite get it). So the idea was to separate the two for now into Twitter Bing and the original Bing. This may be a permanent set up or the conflation of the two services could be coming soon if Microsoft can get this right.

This clearly is something that had to come soon, the fact is that search has to keep up with the booming markets online and the social network is the internets fastest growing niche. And this search engine will let you search twitter feeds as if they were websites, a weird concept but one that for many has been a long time coming. Google however are in talks with Twitter and Facebook to produce the same service so while Microsoft haven’t quite had enough time to corner this late branch of search, but they have got the edge. So will it catch on? Or will the search engine bosses look like a bunch of twits? Only time will tell, but if you fancy giving this service a try you can test Bing’s American beta already.

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With Microsoft desperately trying to move forward in its ever loosing battle to provide the number one search engine it has signed non exclusive deals with both Facebook and Twitter in an attempt to integrate there live feed update services to Bing. Is this a sign of desperation on Microsoft’s part? Trying to cash in on the traffic of social networking sites, or a stroke of genius? Only time will tell. But I doubt that this latest investment in the flailing, floundering search engine Bing will have the guys at Google quivering for too long, not only is the deal not exclusive there is no sign as of yet that it will be lucrative.

So why have Microsoft done this?

Well, to put it simply, Microsoft are failing to keep up with Google and even the lesser used Yahoo, while they may have had the dominance in the internet browser market which more than gently nudges you towards using Bing I might add they haven’t actually managed to convert this into any sort of useful marketing leap.

The other main reason is that they have to get involved in this. Google are in talks with Facebook and Twitter and of course Microsoft cannot afford to fall behind again especially now Google looks set to get another jump on them by indexing AJAX based sites. Google’s index is already staggeringly greater than Microsoft’s and more accurate, thus it works better for users so more people use it, simple really.

The corporate jugernaught that is Microsoft seeks to dominate all things in the computer world and is slipping on many fronts. With apple nipping at Microsoft’s heals and Google trouncing it in the online market they really need to pull something out of the bag and soon lord knows they have the money. So the real question is what the hell is it exactly that Microsoft are playing at? We all saw what happened to Netscape when they took Microsoft on; they were crushed completely and utterly. Though this move will undoubtedly be a bonus to Bing users the real question is, is it a bonus to social network users and is it enough of a bonus to convince people to use Bing. Well I would suggest it is quite unlikely even if they do manage to get it all integrated before Google.

Although social networks do absorb a great detail of our lives has it got to the point where they can be the tipping point in corporate competitions? I doubt it. Let’s just hope that the arrival of windows 7 is well received or the giants may be seeing some dark days in the near future.

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google page rank

Many webmasters seem to focus way too much on Google page rank, it was even removed from Google’s webmaster tools to try and compete with this problem. The Google page rank was seen as a sure fire way to monitor exactly how well your site was doing and even see exactly how your competitors were doing. The page rank is not gone completely how ever and does still impact your placing in the Serps and your ability to buy/sell links (if that’s your area of the market). The major problem with the page rank we see is that the version we get to see derives from the Google tool bar and this is only updated every 3 months or so. And of course sites can change in value incredibly quickly and the factors which create your page rank could be changing on a daily basis, so how could you possibly stake all your faith in something which could quite possibly be anything between 2 and four months out of date.

Why Google page rank isn’t important

Google page rank is not important simply because page rank does not equal money by any means, unless you’re a link seller, and even then this is a dying theory as more and more webmasters wise up to the flaws in the page rank system. And assuming your not you don’t need page rank. Page rank doesn’t mean you’ll get instant traffic it doesn’t mean that you’re going to convert well and it certainly doesn’t mean your site will make you lots of money. This theory that page rank is the be all and end all of being a successful webmaster is one that many webmasters still cling to diligently and the sooner you forget about page rank the sooner you can be successful. This is why Google removed the page rank.

So, what are my alternatives to measuring Google page rank?

Well, Alexa rankings are fast becoming the industries standard in how to measure the value of a site, it shows you a sites traffic, reach age and the Alexa ranking gives a reasonable if not definitive ranking even if it is rather frustrating to get to grips with at 1^st. And it updates in what is close to real time, unlike page rank. However Google still uses page rank for its own devices we just can’t see the real time version. Or can we? Well there are many schemes which say that you can. And surely one of them must work right?

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Well the Google bots currently cannot see sites produced in AJAX just the same way they can’t see flash and struggle with java and though most java is not in AJAX the google bots ability to see AJAX would enable many webmasters to add much more appealing content to their sites. The scripts are particularly complicated to read in an automated fashion in comparison with other more traditionally coded sites and added to which it is likely that they can be manipulated easier to contain harmful data to users and hide things from the search engine bots. This has been the concern with letting AJAX be added to the bots lists of things to crawl.

Google proposes AJAX crawling

On the 20^th October Google proposed making AJAX sites crawlable the idea that the big wigs at Google have put forth aims to help make the process of getting your AJAX site visible to bots as painless as possible as well as of course their aims to make AJAX sites visible to bots in the 1^st place. If you are one of the people worried about how to do this there is an explanation of the URL changes on Google’s official blog. However a proposal is not always a guaranteed change, as we all know much of what Google and other major companies suggest putting into place will never make it out of the planning phases. And with such a mixed response to this proposal we certainly can’t be sure whether this one will either.

Why bother with AJAX?

Well the reason that Google is investing so heavily in this is simple, AJAX has fantastic usability and is very popular with consumers so the second its competitors indexed the site Google could be put at a disadvantage and quite obviously did not want to loose their crushing hold on the market. But, why is it popular with consumers and webmasters? Well that’s easy it’s popular for the same reason java script is popular it provides an easy way for webmasters to produce a user friendly piece of eye candy that their user will enjoy. This in turn produces more return visitors and higher conversion rates in comparison with their basic HTML competitors. But, of course despite the changes HTML still seems to be the best option to SEO your site but, at least this minor step will be a much welcomed endorsement for AJAX using webmasters.

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link building

What is link building?

Link building is an integral part of increasing page rank and increasing your ranking in any search engine. This is the process of creating backlinks to a web page. Link building is known to be the most time consuming, costly and difficult part of SEO and due to its time consuming nature link building services are highly sought after.

Why use link building services?

The main reason to use link building services is that they are usually provided by people who have been doing the task for a long period of time and thus they tend to be acquainted with the whole process have the right contacts and are able to cut down the time the process takes. And they should know all the ways to build links fast and cheaply, they won’t get taken advantage of in the same way as somebody who is uneducated in SEO.

How do I spot a good link building service?

Well spotting a good link building service is usually pretty simple, as conmen aren’t particularly difficult to spot these days. If you see someone on a forum offering to give you 250k backlinks for $100 odds are they are going to take your money and run. So check their Itrader rating this is essential when purchasing on a forum. Or if they do provide these links they do provide the countless links they promise they are quite probably worthless. However we must consider the fact that not all free links are worthless by any means. That’s when spotting a good, cheap link building service can become very, very difficult. If you are on a low budget you should make sure that if a link building service offers you a vast amount of links to ask for a sample of the sites they are using to provide this link building service and then, check the quality for yourself. The service should provide you a few good quality links in amongst the numerous cheap or free links. They should also not look like spam, while hundreds of social bookmarks and blog comments are useful they do need to have text involved and not be blatantly computerised. Search engines have algorithms to spot spam, and while you may see short term benefits, you have the possibility of receiving intense penalties down the line. So trying to find a trustworthy link building service can be difficult and you really must avoid blackhat methods unless you know what you’re doing, which it is likely when you’re applying for a cheep link building service you probably do not. One group of people that produce a top notch service are the guys at Site Expert Company

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Page rank is one of the main factors taken into account when Google decides what page to place your page on. So this makes having a good page rank very important, so if your page rank is a little to low, then this could be why you don’t rank very well and that is why you could need to increase page rank.

How to increase page rank?

Well like everything with Google there is no singular factor which will increase page rank, but the most eminent factor does seem to be back links, and of course this is why link building is such an important factor in SEO campaigns. Of course there are other ways to help boost your page rank, it is believed widely amongst SEOs that search engines value fresh and unique content and this of course applies to Google. This means updating your website on a regular basis with new information. Google and other search engines devalue websites that do not update information for long periods of time and if you’re unlucky you may even end up being completely devalued by Google and given a page rank of 0. Fresh and unique content can often be difficult to create as can good quality back links, and often it can be better to enlist the services of more experienced webmasters if you’re new to SEO and want to increase page rank.

Link building to increase page rank

With link building such an integral concern to increase page rank it seems that this service may be somewhere you want to invest and the guys at Organic Seo Services Company can provide this successfully. To increase page rank you must build back links and doing this can seem daunting, especially if you don’t know where to begin. There are several ways to go about building back links, ranging from the free and undervalued social bookmark to the standard and more valuable in content text link. Your budget and aims should be realistic when you start a link building campaign and you need to understand that some sites will give you more of a boost towards increasing your page rank than others. For example a relevant site with a page rank of 7 will help your site more than an irrelevant one with a page rank of 2 this of course may seem like common sense once you think about it.

Google page rank changes
You should also be aware that while Google is constantly updating the page rank of your site you will not be able to see the changes so often. So this is where patience comes into the equation of how to increase page rank. The Google tool bar which is the only valid way to check page rank is only updated 4 times a year and there is no way to tell the exactly when the updates will come. This can be very frustrating for webmasters.

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This link popularity tool measures the amount of links pointing towards any given site; this is an absolutely essential tool for any link building campaign. Especially due to the fact the Google toolbar does not update regularly so you cannot truly see a potential links page rank to judge its value completely. Whereas this tool will give you a fairly accurate idea of the boost you will receive from the inbound link as the best way to see a website’s accurate link value is to inspect the links which it has.

This tool is an accurate work of the guys at Site Expert Seo Services which is easy to use and gives you fast results. The site expert’s link popularity tool simply eclipses all other attempts at link value spotting tools as the vast majority of the other options simply don’t work. So if you want something which does the job you want, and need it to do. Then the link popularity tool from site expert is exactly what you need.

Judging the value of links

So you might ask why you need to know the value of links or why a link popularity tool is necessary, and quite simply it will save you an absolute fortune, if you buy links simply off page rank you may end up paying page rank 7 prices and only getting the benefits of a page rank 2, and even better you can pick up fantastic bargain’s for example a pr0 with enough back links could give you more benefits than a pr2 with rotted links. So don’t waste time and money this link popularity tool is exactly what you need to check your links the right way.

Other ways to judge links

Well clearly you should all be aware of page rank and it’s drawbacks, so we’ll focus on the other things you should check, for starters you should make sure that the site is still indexed, as sites that are banned will attract negative attention to your own and remember search engines don’t really like gambling or porn, so unless you belong to these categories avoid linking to them. Finally the amount external (outbound) links a site has and the amount of internal links both effect it’s value the more links going outward the less value a link has. This is important to take into consideration as you have to share the value of a site between all the other sites it links to. So, low externals are equally as important as the links that are inbound to gain you the benefits of linking.

Demo and download link : link popularity tool

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